The Rustle of Silk
queer to Arrowsmith's physical sense, and he couldn't for the life of
him play conversational ball with Feo on the road home. "To follow
_that_," he thought, and was nauseated.
But Feo was in her softest, her most feminine mood. After dinner she was
going to dance with this man and be held in his arms. It was a
delightful surprise to discover that she possessed a heart. She had
begun to doubt it. She had been an experimentalist hitherto. And so she
didn't have much to say. And when they emerged from the squalor of
Hammersmith and were passing Queen's Road, Bayswater, the picture of
Lola came suddenly into her mind, the girl in love, and she wondered
sympathetically how she was getting on. "What shall I wear to-night? I
hate those new frocks.--I hope the band plays Boheme at the Ritz.--No
diamonds, just pearls. He's a pearl man, I think. And I'll brush Peau
d'Espagne through my hair. What a profile he has,--Cupid."
And she shuddered. She had married a profile, the fool. To be set free
was impossible. The British public did not allow its Cabinet Ministers
to be divorced.
At Dover Street Arrowsmith sprang from the car. He handed Feo out and
rang the doorbell.
"You look white," she said. "What's the matter?"
He was grateful for the chance. "That old wound," he said. "It goes back
on me from time to time."
"That doesn't mean that you'll have to chuck tonight?" She was aghast.
"I'm awfully afraid so, if you don't mind. It means bed, instantly, and
a doctor. Do forgive me. I can't help myself. I wish to God I could."
She swallowed an indescribable disappointment and said "Good night,
then. So sorry. Ring me up in the morning and let me know how you feel."
But she knew that he wouldn't. It was written round his mouth. And as
she went upstairs she whipped herself and cursed Macquarie and looked
back at her kite-tail of indiscriminations with overwhelming regret.
Arrowsmith was a pucca man.
V
Ernest Treadwell watched the car come and go.
Lola had given out at home that she was to be away with Lady Feo, but
that morning he had seen in the paper that her ladyship was in town. She
had "been seen" dining at Hurlingham after the polo match with Major
Clive Arrowsmith, D. S. O., late Grenadier Guards. Dying to see Lola, to
break the wonderful news that his latest sonnet on Death had been
printed by the _Westminster Gazette_, the first of his efforts to find
acceptance in any publication, Treadwell had hurried to Dover Street,
had ventured to present himself at the area door and had been told by
Ellen that Lola was away on a holiday.
For half an hour he had been walking up and down the street, looking
with puzzled and anxious eyes at the house which had always seemed to
him to wear a sinister look. If she had not been going away with Lady
Feo, why had she said that she was? A holiday,--alone, stolen from her
people and from him to whom hitherto she had always told everything?
What was the meaning of it?--She, Lola, had not told the truth. The
thought blew him into the air, like an explosion. Considering himself,
with the egotism of all half-baked socialists, an intellectual from the
fact that he read Massingham and quoted Sidney Webb, he boasted of being
without faith in God and constitution. He sneered at Patriotism now, and
while he stood for Trades-Unionism remained, like all the rest of his
kind, an individualist to the marrow. But he had believed in Lola
because he loved her and she inspired him, and without her encouragement
and praise he knew that he would let go and crash. Just as he had been
printed in the _Westminster Gazette_!
And she had not told the truth, even to her people. Where was she? What
was she doing? To whom could she go to spend a holiday? She had no other
relation than her aunt and she also was in town. Ellen had told him so
in answer to his question.--Back into a mind black with jealousy and
suspicion--he was without the habit of faith--came the picture of Lola,
dressed like a lady, getting out of a taxicab at the shady-looking house
in Castleton Terrace. Had she lied to him then?
Dover Street was at the bottom of it all, and her leaving home to become
a lady's maid to such a woman as Lady Feo. She must have caught some of
the poison of that association, God knew what! In time of trouble it is
always the atheist who is the first to call on God.
He was about to leave the street in which the Fallaray house had now
assumed the appearance of a morgue to him when Simpkins came up from the
area, with a dull face. After a moment of irresolution he followed and
caught the valet up. "Where's Miss Breezy?" he asked abruptly.
Simpkins was all the more astonished at the question for the trouble on
that young cub's face. He looked him over sharply,--the cheap cap, the
too long hair, the big nose, the faulty teeth, the pasty face, the
un-athletic body, the awkward feet. Lola was in love. He knew that well
enough. But not with this lout, that was certain, poet or no poet. "I
don't know as 'ow I've got to answer that question," he said, just to
put him in his place.
"Yes, you have. Where is she?"
"You ought ter know." He himself knew and as there was no accounting for
tastes and Lola had made a friend of this anaemic hooligan, why didn't
_he_? He lived round the corner from the shop, anyhow.
"But I don't know. Neither do her father and mother."
"What's that?" Simpkins drew up short. "You don't know what you're
talkin' about. She went 'ome last Thursday to get a little rest until
to-morrer,--Tuesday."
Treadwell would have cried out, "It isn't true," but he loved Lola and
was loyal. He had met Simpkins in Queen's Road, Bayswater, and had seen
him on familiar terms with Mr. Breezy, but he was a member of the
Fallaray household and as such was not to be let into this--_this_
trouble. Not even the Breezys must be told before Lola had been seen and
had given an explanation. They didn't love her as much as he did,--nor
any one else in the world. And so he said, loyalty overmastering his
jealousy and fear, "Oh, is that so? I haven't had time to look in
lately. I didn't know." And seeing a huge unbelief in Simpkins's pale
eyes, he hurried on to explain. "Being in the neighborhood and having
some personal news for Lola, I called at your house. Was surprised to
hear that she was away. That's all. Good night." And away he went, head
forward, left foot turning in, long arms swinging loose.
But he had touched the spring in Simpkins to a jealousy and a fear that
were precisely similar to his own. Lola was _not_ at home. Treadwell
knew it and had called at Dover Street, expecting to find her there.
They had all been told lies because she was doing something of which she
was ashamed. The night that she had come in, weeping, dressed like a
lady.--The words that had burned into his soul the evening of his
proposal,--"so awfully in love with somebody else and it's a difficult
world.--Perhaps I shall never be married and that's the truth, Simpky.
It's a difficult world."
"Hi," he called out. "Hi," and started after Treadwell, full stride.
But rather than face those searching eyes again, at the back of which
there was a curious blaze, Treadwell took to his heels, and followed
hard by Simpkins, whose fanatical spirit of protection was stirred to
its depths, dodged from one street into another. The curious chase would
have ended in Treadwell's escape but for the sudden intervention, in
Vigo Street, of a policeman who slipped out of the entrance to the
Albany and caught the boy in his arms.
"Now then, now then," he said. "What's all this 'ere?"
And up came Simpkins, blowing badly, with his tie under his left ear.
"It's--it's alri, Saunders. A friendly race, that's all. He's--he's a
paller mine. Well run, Ernie!" And he put his arm round Treadwell's
shoulders, laughing.
And the policeman, whose wind was good, laughed, too, at the sight of
those panting men. "Mind wot yer do, Mr. Simpkins," he said, to the nice
little fellow with whom he sometimes took a drink at the bottom of the
area steps. "Set up 'eart trouble if yer not careful."
Set up heart trouble? Simpkins looked with a sudden irony at the boy who
also would give his life to Lola. And the look was met and understood.
It put them on another footing, they could see.
After a few more words of badinage the policeman mooched off to finish
his talk with the tall-hatted keeper of the Albany doorway. And Simpkins
said gravely and quietly, "Treadwell, we've got to go into this, you and
me. We're in the same boat and Lola's got ter be--looked after, by both
of us."
Treadwell nodded. "I'm frightened," he said, without camouflage.
"So am I," said Simpkins.
And they went off together, slowly, brought into confidence by a mutual
heart trouble that had already set up.
VI
But there was no uneasiness in Queen's Road, Bayswater. John Breezy and
his good wife were happy in the belief that their little girl was
enjoying the air and scents of the country with her ladyship. They had
neither the time nor the desire to dig deeply into the daily papers. To
read of the weathercock policy of the overburdened Prime Minister,
traditionally, nationally, and mentally unable to deal with the great
problems that followed upon each other's heels, made Breezy blasphemous
and brought on an incapacity to sit still. And so he merely glanced at
the front page, hoping against hope for a new government headed by such
men as Lord Robert Cecil, Lord Derby, Lord Grey and Edmund Fallaray, and
for the ignominious downfall of all professional scavengers, titled
newspaper owners and mountebanks who were playing ducks and drakes with
the honor and the traditions of Parliament. He had no wish to be under
the despotism of a Labor Government, having seen that loyalty to leaders
was unknown among Trades Unionists and that principles were things which
they never had had and never would have the courage to avow.
As for Mrs. Breezy, she never had time for the papers. She didn't know
and didn't care which party was in power, or the difference between
them, and when she heard her husband discuss politics with his friends,
burst into a tirade and get red in the face, as every self-respecting
man has the right to do, she just folded her hands in her lap, smiled,
and said to herself, "Dear old John, what would he do in the millennium,
with no government to condemn!" Therefore, these people had not seen in
the daily "Chit Chat about Society" the fact that Lady Feo had not left
town. They never read those luscious morsels. Because Lady Feo had not
left town Aunt Breezy had been too busy to come round on her usual
evening, when she would have discovered immediately that Lola was up to
something and put the fat in the fire. And so they were happy in their
ignorance,--which is, pretty often, the only state in which it is
achieved.
Over dinner that night--a scrappy meal, because whenever any one entered
the shop Mrs. Breezy ran out to do her best to sell something--the
conversation turned to the question of Lola's marriage, as it frequently
did. That public house on the river, with its kitchen garden, still
rankled. "You know, John," said Mrs. Breezy suddenly, "I've been
thinking it all over. We were wrong to suppose that Lola would ever have
married a man like Simpkins."
"Why? He's a good fellow, respectable, clean-minded, thinks a good deal
of himself and has a nice bit of money stowed away. You don't want her
to become engaged to one of these young fly-by-nights round here, do
you,--little clerks who spend all their spare money on clothes, have no
ambition, no education and want to get as much as they can for nothing?"
"No," said Mrs. Breezy. "I certainly do not, though I don't think it